Examining colloquial contractions of 「せる・させる」:さして・はしらして・とらした etc

In Japanese there are a bunch of grammatical forms that you see in a textbook, but their usage in real life can be quite different.

Today we’re going to look at 使役「しえき」, which are called causative verbs.

I was never one for linguistics, so it’s easier for me (and you!) to instead think of these as ‘forcing’ someone to do something, or ‘letting’ them do something.

In Japanese, this can be said as 「他に何かの動作をさせること。」but like all bad definitions, this contains the very word in it that I’m trying to explain.

However, the point of this blog post is not to teach you about causative verbs per se, but to introduce how they can change slightly, especially in spoken Japanese. This is a tricky topic in Japanese and there have been many guides that deal with it better than me: Japanese and English.

However, this version of it is a much easier way to create causative verbs, however you will still need to know both ways.

One of the first times I came across this is when I had someone from the gas company come to my apartment to do something with the gas supply. After he had done a bit of work outside, he came to the げんかん and then said「点検さして」, pointing at the gas panel thing above my head.

I didn’t really understand what he said, but I did know what 点検「てんけん」 meant, and I assumed because it didn’t have the causative verb in there (or so I thought!) I went ahead and clicked the switch he was pointing to.

Of course, this confused him because he specifically said, ‘let me do the inspection’. So after staring at me for a second, he proceeded to take his shoes off and step up into my apartment to finish his inspection. I then returned to my laptop to study some more Japanese as I had obviously missed something.

Now the simple way to make all these verbs, is to make the standard causative verb conjugation first, but then just change the ending from せる to す.

You can check for yourself in a dictionary and these will have separate entries, such as 泣かす・走らす・取らす and many others.

Let’s look at a bunch of examples to see this in action:

体力をつけるため生徒を走らした。

The students were made to run by the teacher to gain stamina.

牛乳がないので弟を買い物に行かした。

Because there was no milk, my younger brother was made to go shopping for it.

発音練習のために英語の文章を読ます。

To practice pronunciation practice, we were made to read English sentences.

先生は日記を日本語で書かす。

The teacher made us write a diary in Japanese.

運動不足の弟を歩かす。

My unfit brother was forced to walk.

赤ちゃんにミルクを飲ます。

Make a baby drink milk.

お母さんはお父さんにゴミを捨てさす。

My mum made my dad take out the rubbish.

寒くなったので生徒に窓を閉めさす。

Because it became cold, the student was made to shut the window.

大家さんは部屋を綺麗に掃除さす。

We were made to clean the room by the landlord.

お母さんは私にたくさん野菜を食べさす。

I am made to eat a lot of vegetables by my mother.

上司は部下にデータを入力さす。

The subordinates were made to enter the data by the boss.

お父さんは私に車を運転さす。

My dad made me drive.

So that wraps it up, although there are many more examples. Let me know in the comments if there are any other common variations of this grammar that you see. Thanks for reading and see you in the next blog post!

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